Hi everyone! I am excited to share with you a popular lyrical verse during the Middle Ages, Ballata (Italian). It was originally set to music meant for joyful dancing. It has limited rhyme and includes a refrain.

Source/Credit

The ballata (plural: ballate) is an Italian poetic and musical form in use from the late 13th to the 15th century. It has the musical form AbbaA, with the first and last stanzas having the same texts. It is thus most similar to the French musical ‘forme fixe’ virelai (and not the ballade as the name might otherwise suggest). The first and last “A” is called a ripresa, the “b” lines are piedi (feet), while the fourth line is called a “volta”. Longer ballate may be found in the form AbbaAbbaA, etc. Unlike the virelai, the two “b” lines usually have exactly the same music and only in later ballate pick up the (formerly distinctly French) first and second (open and close) endings. The term comes from the verb ballare, to dance, and the form certainly began as dance music.

The elements are :

*stanzaic, written most often in 3 quatrains which includes a refrain (A) at the end of each stanza. Occasionally you may find more than 3 stanzas in the poem. The refrain (A) is also added at the beginning of the 1st quatrain, making the 1st stanza a quintain (5 lines).

*categorized as having no set meter. However during the period from which these verse forms emerged, quantitative or syllabic meters were most often present in the verse of these regions. The dominant Occitan meter was hexasyllabic (6 syllable) lines and the dominant Italian meter was the heptasyllabic (7 syllable) lines with the primary accent on the 6th syllable.

*rhymed, rhyme scheme AbbaA bbaA bbaA

First Stanza – 5 lines
Second Stanza – 4 lines
Third Stanza – 4 lines
(etc)

Gentle Rain
by Grace Guevara

you are the gentle rain       (A)
on burning summer sky      (b)
slow patter on my eyes       (b)
lingering kiss that remains   (a)
you are the gentle rain        (A)

sketching greens as birds fly      (b)
scatter-skitter noise, your sighs  (b)
are calming clouds & quiet plains (a)
you are the gentle rain               (A)

humming blues with bow tie  (b)
my hands are stirring chai     (b)
winding down, hushed vane   (a)
you are the gentle rain          (A)

Writing challenge: Write a poem using the ballata rhyme pattern as explained above. You can write 3 or more stanzas for your poem but note that the end rhyme scheme is limited to two, A and b.

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*Write a ballata poem in response to the writing challenge.
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